What is preventing Ralzakark from Creating a New Empire of Light?

[AndreasDavour]

Thanks!

[John Biles]

On 5/26/2023 at 3:03 AM, mfbrandi said:

Although, as illumination seems to work fine with (we are assured) Nysalor in bits, why go to all the trouble?

Nysalor is an illumination salesman rather than the source of illumination.  Though really not so much a salesman as someone basically created a way to use memes the way the creator of the idea of memes imagined them - an invasive thought-complex that pushes out other ideas and takes over a chunk of your brain., then uses you to spread to others.

Which is why Nysalorean illumination produces people who create plagues; so above, so below.

 

[DrGoth]

5 hours ago, John Biles said:

Nysalor is an illumination salesman rather than the source of illumination.  Though really not so much a salesman as someone basically created a way to use memes the way the creator of the idea of memes imagined them - an invasive thought-complex that pushes out other ideas and takes over a chunk of your brain., then uses you to spread to others.

Which is why Nysalorean illumination produces people who create plagues; so above, so below. 

 

I think that's a bit simplistic. The illuminated have to choose what to do with their illumination.  Some are good, some are bad, some are crazed world destroyers.  The issue to me with Nysalor's empire seems to have been not what the possibilities were (they are inherent in illumination) but in the measures taken to control what was done (basically, pretty much none). To quote the Lives of Sedenya "As illuminated beings it is our duty to protect the weak, to defy the strong, and to teach the Great Secret of Being to all who are yet to attain it."  Nysalor's Empire didn't live up to that.

[metcalph]

I think Nysalor's Empire was dangerous not for what it taught but a side-effect of those teachings.  Simply put, Nysalor could break the Cosmic Compromise (Cf the Sunstop and the Battle of Night and Day).  What happens when you break the Compromise?  The Cosmos cracks and Chaos seeps in.  It doesn't matter whether he or his followers did it for good purposes or bad, all that matters is that it was done and would continue to be done for as long as his Empire existed.  

Where he and his worshippers aware that they were causing Chaos?  Yes, but they didn't *fear* Chaos.  They knew that it was neither evil or inimical.  They probably had rules to ameliorate any disturbances that they caused.  But no matter what they did, it wouldn't have satisfied Arkat.

 

[mfbrandi]

7 hours ago, John Biles said:

Nysalor is an illumination salesman rather than the source of illumination.

Well, I totally buy that illumination is not the gift of any god. It is something we can learn to do on our own, and as long as people ask questions …

7 hours ago, John Biles said:

Which is why Nysalorean illumination produces people who create plagues

However, shilling for the Bright Empire with plagues: does that necessarily create more illuminates, or does it just make people more willing to accept Nysalor’s empire?

(As an aside, given the nature of Glorantha’s “in-world” documentation, do we know that it is canon that the Nysalor shills did spread the plagues, or is it just canon that everybody says they did and believes it because they anyway think they were a rum lot? I am not saying missionaries and imperial scouts are not dodgy, it is just unlikely that every villain committed every crime attributed to them. Everybody says so? Truth isn’t a democracy.)

[soltakss]

On 5/28/2023 at 3:23 AM, John Biles said:

Nysalor is an illumination salesman rather than the source of illumination.

Perhaps, in a way. Rashoran was the original source of Illumnination, but he was killed in the Gods War. Osentalka, the Perfect One, might have been Rashoran Reborn. In any case, he was the new source of Illumination, in the same way that the Red Goddess is the new source of Illumination.

[French Desperate WindChild]

15 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Perhaps, in a way. Rashoran was the original source of Illumnination, but he was killed in the Gods War. Osentalka, the Perfect One, might have been Rashoran Reborn. In any case, he was the new source of Illumination, in the same way that the Red Goddess is the new source of Illumination.

how to understand "source" ?

those who teach the illumination ?

 

or those who generate illumination ?

 

I mean, a source of water provides water. If there is no more source, there is no more water (not the science, the idea, of course if there is water, there is water somewhere, but not accessible or harder)

 

On 5/28/2023 at 10:05 AM, DrGoth said:

The illuminated have to choose what to do with their illumination

true however, if those who teached you (or accompanied you on the path) showed you, instiled you, some "seed", some direction, and did not show you others, well you may think that's the only way (or range of ways) is what you learned.

even if it is a personal "transformation", Nysaloran / lunar illumination (or any other, but they are in the rules) is driven by some guides/teachers.

 

[mfbrandi]

22 hours ago, soltakss said:

Perhaps, in a way. Rashoran was the original source of Illumination, but he was killed in the Gods War. Osentalka, the Perfect One, might have been Rashoran Reborn. In any case, he was the new source of Illumination, in the same way that the Red Goddess is the new source of Illumination.

Perhaps, but perhaps not. The locus classicus of Gloranthan illumination:

Quote

Arkat Humaktson, “The Liberator,” led the heroic cleansing of the land … in the end leaving a trail of cinders across the continent before the final victory. Though its temporal power was broken, and its god now lay dead, the cult could not be completely eradicated because it required no temples or priesthood …

The Red Goddess woke the cult. She undertook a great path and in her journey sought passage beyond an empty shadow on the Spirit Plane. She engaged it, defeated it, and thereby became Illuminated by the god Nysalor. With his knowledge, she went to deeper places and freed the Crimson Bat from its eternal bondage …

The realities of the world always are in question, and there always are new revelations and perceptions which may alter any being’s outlook on the universe. The cult will continue to exist until all questions have been asked and answered. — Cults of Terror PDF, p. 84

Between the death of Nysalor and the rise of the Red Goddess, were there no new illuminates riddled into being? If the riddles worked by god-sustained magic, the riddlers wouldn’t have had to try to forget them, as they would have been “harmless”, right?

And then we sub “Nysalor” (for “Buddha” and “God”) into a passage from Nietzsche:

On 5/21/2023 at 2:53 PM, mfbrandi said:

After [Nysalor] was dead people showed his shadow for centuries afterwards in a cave, — an immense frightful shadow. [Nysalor] is dead: but as the human race is constituted, there will perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow. — And we — we have still to overcome his shadow!
— The Gay Science, “New Struggles”

So do we take it that on Sedenya’s quest she literally beat up a dead god, or did she just meditate and reflect, concluding that it was OK to use the weapon of mass destruction in bat form — because Chaos/Schmaos: it is all one?

The cult of illumination has outlasted its god — Rashorana is dead, Rashorana remains dead, and we have killed her — and if it ever was, it is not a theistic cult (sacrificing to a superbeing for magic) but a very loosely connected bunch of people with (allegedly) some insight. It seems it may well survive the deaths of all the gods. And the fading of their shadows, too?

I would like to think that the sophisticated, modern riddler is not grovelling before their dead god but overcoming their shadow. A charitable reading of Argrath’s human-supremacist rant: “The gods are dead, and we have killed them (by feeding them to their own shadow), and we have overcome that shadow (Wakboth), too.” Charitable, all too charitable?

As to whether Arkat — arhat, arihant — liberated anyone but himself, I couldn’t comment, but perhaps “the liberator” was a bitterly ironic title whose original import was lost over the centuries. He was certainly involved in a self-overcoming which spilled out of his troubled psyche into the mundane world. He needs to drop a letter before he can try to rearrange himself into Tara (and Taraltara seems to have retconned into the Great Omega). But given his tendency to rebirth — although we could say Argrath != Arkat, even if Argrath is an arhat —, perhaps he is not even as enlightened as his arhat-like name would suggest. But that is OK, isn’t it: our putative teachers of illumination need not themselves be illuminated, right? — Well, OK, that is definitely non-canon. — Or perhaps they have shown over and over that they cannot teach it, but only “yogic superpowers”? The true sages you never heard of, because they know better than to cause world-shaking trouble. As usual, I really don’t know.

Beware shiny new gods: they are sources of light only in the most literal sense. True illumination involves the snuffing out of one’s own light, and that is the secret of an old, old deity, present at the births of Styx and Zaramaka.

Edited May 30, 2023 by mfbrandi
counting error!

[AndreasDavour]

We are all Arkat.

[mfbrandi]

35 minutes ago, AndreasDavour said:

We are all Arkat.

Be afraid, be very afraid!